Don Aucoin in the Boston Globe explores why Analyzing happiness is a growth industry.
In that piece he quotes author and TV host John Izzo who asked 235 elderly people how and where they found happiness.
"I've always been interested in the question of why some people live well and die happy, and some people die as if they missed the party," explains Izzo. So he asked his interviewees, who ranged in age from 60 to 106, such questions as "What brought happiness to your life?", "What do you wish you'd learned sooner?", and "What do you regret?"
"Almost no one regretted something they tried in their life that didn't work out, yet almost everyone said they wished they had risked more," Izzo says. "They said the greatest fear at the end of life is not death or failure. It's that you didn't even try." The men in particular regretted not showing their wives or children how much they loved them. "What I've discovered is my BMW doesn't visit me in the nursing home," one retired businessman told Izzo.
So what were some of the secrets of happiness? In addition to living in the moment and being true to yourself, the consensus of the interviewees, Izzo says, was: "If you want to be a person who's happy, be a giver." In other words, focus not on yourself but on the needs of others. "They said when you're young you think your greatest happiness will come from what you get from life, but looking back they realized the only things that gave meaning was the fact that they gave," says Izzo.